San Francisco Chamber of Commerce ‘outraged’ over minimum wage measure

Bob Linscheid, president and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is “outraged” over a ballot measure to raise San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, saying in a statement on Monday that it “flies in the face of collaboration and partnership.”

The measure would lift base pay about 40 percent from its current $10.74, making San Francisco’s minimum wage the highest in the country. Activists were expected to file papers on Monday for the November ballot.

“This initiative is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to influence the outcome of the consensus-building process that will begin this week under the leadership of Mayor Ed Lee,” Chamber president and CEO Bob Linscheid said in the statement. “Actions that seek to preempt productive dialogue have no place in our city’s policy-making process and do nothing to bring stakeholders together as we prepare to tackle some of our city’s most important challenges.”

The measure, designed by SEIU Local 1021, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other activist groups, would give companies with fewer than 100 employees until 2017 to raise wages to $15 an hour. They would have to lift them to $13 an hour by next year and $14 by 2016. Larger businesses would have less time.

The Chamber noted that it and the city’s businesses would consider another wage increase, according to the statement, but that concerns over the time frame and total compensation costs must be addressed to avoid “negative, unintended, consequences on job creators and the economy.”